Starknet

StarkWare’s first production route was StarkEx, live from June 2020. It let a specific exchange or application send batches to a StarkWare service, generate a STARK proof and settle a commitment on Ethereum. Rollup, Validium and Volition deployments could make different data-availability tradeoffs, and the application retained its own operator.

Starknet reused Cairo, SHARP and STARK verification for a different social object: a shared network where unrelated developers can deploy contracts without asking a customer operator. That difference explains why StarkEx users could receive Provisions without their old application becoming governed by STRK.

The shared network still divides execution from settlement. A sequencer chooses and runs transactions; SNOS and the prover produce verifiable evidence; Ethereum accepts the resulting state update. Validity limits fraudulent state, while ordering and availability remain operational questions.

StarkWare created ten billion units in May 2022 and minted them on Ethereum on November 30, before public trading. The February 20, 2024 Provisions round made more than 700 million claimable to a broad eligibility set. A September 2024 onchain vote approved the minting curve, staking v1 launched November 26, and v0.14.0 made STRK the sole fee currency in September 2025.

The sequence matters because the token’s three labels are not interchangeable. Fees purchase execution; staking locks assets behind validator performance and a seven-day exit delay; governance assigns proposal votes. None gives a passive right to sequencer income, ownership of the code company, or repayment from the Foundation.

The original ten-billion allocation put 38.21% with early contributors and investors, 10.76% with StarkWare, and the remaining 51.03% across grants, provisions, rebates, reserves, treasury and donations. Foundation-retained tokens can be contractually unlocked without being counted as circulating until moved into programs.

After criticism of the initial cliff, the current schedule capped releases at up to 64 million per month from April 2024 through March 2025, then up to 127 million per month through March 2027. Locked units cannot be sold, transferred or pledged, although voting delegation is allowed; the token document says staking locked units was not allowed at its last update.

Unlocking and inflation are different supply channels. Unlocks make existing units transferable; the staking curve creates new units. The 2025 review reported 33 million STRK inflation since staking began, while the token document reserves later block-reward minting for the stage when StarkWare is no longer the sole sequencer operator.

Staking v1 initially accumulated economic weight without consensus duties. Phase 2 added epochs and assigned each validator a block to attest. Missing the window costs rewards, so delegators can observe reliability, but the attestation does not let that validator propose the block it signs.

Starknet v0.14.0 introduced distributed sequencing components, and S-two replaced Stone as the mainnet prover in November 2025. Official materials still speak of open block production and decentralized proving in future tense. The network has multiple moving parts, yet a permissionless sequencer-prover market is not established by phase-2 staking alone.

STRK voting has approved real changes, beginning with the staking mint curve. Under the 2026 process, major and minor releases both face community votes, though their delays and Council involvement differ. The Foundation’s ability to allocate and redelegate large voting blocs means participation is open but influence follows token distribution.

The 12-member Security Council sits on a separate rail. It vets major security changes and can act immediately with 75% approval during an emergency. L2BEAT’s independent analysis also notes that Council signers form part of Starknet’s fallback proving and liveness assumptions. The Council is a disclosed safety mechanism and a concentrated control surface at the same time.

A STARK proof answers whether a claimed execution follows the rules. Starknet’s remaining decentralization work asks who supplies those rules, transactions and proofs when a favored operator disappears or refuses service. STRK gives holders tools to influence that answer, but its legal disclaimers, delegated concentration and emergency path keep governance rights narrower than ownership.